


Play me a Song

by Vmello



Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M, piano playing and flirting mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 04:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4592649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vmello/pseuds/Vmello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axton and Zer0 share a moment at Moxxi's bar</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play me a Song

When the Vault Hunters make it to MoXXXi’s they all split off, heading in their own directions. Salvador orders a drink before settling before one of the slot machines. Maya and Krieg sit at one of the tables, one of Moxxi’s bar hands bringing over their usual drinks, Maya skims a menu, even though she orders the same thing every time, a smile twitching her lip as as Krieg shouts something about meat at the bar hand, who startles as she walks away. Axton is pretty sure its supposed to mean thank you, but sometimes it’s hard to tell with the psycho. Zer0 vanishes to god knows where the moment they all separate. Leaving Axton with the task of turning in to Hammerlock for their reward, not one of their biggest, most likely all the cash will go strait into their tab. They can fight over the gun later.

He orders himself a drink before making his way over to Hammerlock. He only half listen’s when the man drabbles on about whatever mission he plans to send them on next. It isn’t entirely that he doesn’t like Hammerlock. He’s a good enough man, and hasn’t tried to kill them yet, which is always a plus, but he isn’t quite as interesting as Tannis, Tina or Claptrap. He isn’t as attractive as Moxxi, Ellie, or Torgue either, and Axton is just shallow enough to admit that makes them a bit easier to pay attention to than Hammerlock. It’s while he’s zoning out that he hears it, the little ‘tinking’ noise coming from the side room. Is that… piano?

“Uh-huh,” he agrees to whatever Hammerlock just asked them to do. He really didn’t catch enough of the details to know, but they weren’t particularly the kind of group to turn down a job, Maya would probably get the important details from him later. 

Axton turns away from Hammerlock to walk the few feet to the side room. He stands in the doorway and can’t help but stare. Just loud enough to barely be heard over the pulsing of the stereo in the room Zer0 is slowly tapping out a tune on a piano that Axton never even noticed in the room before. He couldn’t see the assassin’s face but he had an air of concentration about him. There was some semblance of a melody, but the notes played out too slow, with slightly too long of a gap between each one, as if he knew the song he wanted to play, but struggled to remember its notes. When he hits one sour note his visor projects a dejected looking >:T as he searches for the right one.

When he does eventually find what he was looking for he starts over, this time playing out a short melody with more confidence. A quick ’<3’ flashes across his visor as he finishes and Axton feels a little flutter in his stomach, because damn, that was kind of cute. Zer0 looks up after a moment and freezes when he see’s Axton. He doesn’t know what his face looks like, but the commando likes to imagine that the assassin is blushing right now, if he even can blush. Axton takes a sip of his drink to save himself a moment to think of something to say. When he lowers his beer he gives his friend his most charismatic smile.

“Nice song, you uh, don’t really strike me as a music kinda man, but that was pretty good.” _Real smooth Axton,_ the man thinks to himself his smile faltering a bit. _I don’t think that counts as flirting, not even a little bit. You can do better than that._ “Did you write it yourself?” He asks, stepping farther into the room, so that he’s standing next to the assassin. He idly presses one of the keys, close enough to where Zer0’s hand still lingers that their arms brush together as the light noise sounds out from the piano. He counts it as a win that the other man doesn’t move away.

“I did not write it/ music is not my forte/ but I like this song,” Axton ignored that the assassin mispronounced forte, it have ruined the syllable count if he said it right anyway. Instead he smirked at him.

“I don’t know, that was pretty good, maybe you could write me a song,” he joked.

“If I could, I would/ I could give you something else/ I have many skills,” Zer0 said as he turned to Axton. The commando processed the words for a moment before, oh, _OH,_ ok. That’s, definitely a good step in the right direction. Although Axton couldn’t say he expected it. _Surprises are good,_ he thinks to himself as he looks up at his friends face. Well where his face should be, at this point he’s almost accepted the assassin’s helmet to be his face. He idly wonders if he’ll be surprised by what hides under the visor, before he clears his throat, preparing some sort of reply. stepping a bit closer into the other mans space, not that there was much left between them, but before anything could be said or done Maya stepped into the doorway.

“Hey guys, we got a new job, Hammerlock wants us to…” she trails off when she looks up to see the two men awkwardly step away from each other. “Ooooh, sorry, I’ll come back later,” she said with a smirk. “No rush, you guys just keep doing what you were doing.” As she goes to step backwards out of the room she runs into Salvador, who was waving around a mechanical arm.

“Look amigos! Hammerlock gave us his arm,” he let out a brief chuckle. “He’ll be giving us a hand this mission.” Zer0 let out a sigh, projecting :/ from his visor, before making his way towards the exit. Axton let out a disgruntled noise, staring at Zer0’s retreating back before turning to Maya for a mission briefing. Salvador frowns at the arm he holds in his hand. “The joke wasn’t _that_ bad,” he declares as he makes to follow the assassin.


End file.
